Citroen’s snobbier sub-brand DS Automobiles, have dusted off their crystal balls and projected 20 years into the future. By far their most extreme concept, the E-Tense is a 1000 kW front wheel drive electric machine with Formula E suspension and some seriously jaw-dropping design choices.
Looking like it’s been left out in the sun or subjected to crash testing, some would call it asymmetrical, because it’s both electrically-driven and fully autonomous.
DS give the driver the most extreme experience, by putting them out in the wind with an open cockpit – protected by nothing but a short angled windscreen. You can still take passengers though, the driver’s scissor door is mirrored by a double-length gull wing on the passenger side, which swings open to reveal two enclosed passenger ‘cocoons’. It seems DS isn’t big on conversations between drivers and passengers.
Fragile ‘light veil’ curtains stretch like spider webs across the front and rear aspects of the concept. DS claim this ‘future technology’ makes the E-Tense capable of recovering its original form after an impact – and if that’s true, they totally copied Terminator 2.
Along with the unbreakable waffle skin tech, this current concept/future machine, also features seats that mold themselves to the passengers, and an ‘acoustic bubble” that focuses and adapts a sound beam on a particular passenger and follows them around. Finally Taylor Swift can stalk you…
DS continue to shock and provoke and their latest is worthy of at least as much attention as Mercedes’ Vision EQ Silver Arrow concept. We do wonder what they were smoking though – and have some too.
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